Always Burn Brighter
by UnmovingGreatLibrary
Summary: Swallowing a god left Okuu with some anger problems. Fortunately, Rin is here to help.


Apotheosis was a tricky business at the best of times, and it had been thrust upon Utsuho without warning. Sometimes it sunk low into her soul, and she could ignore it for weeks. Other times, it speared itself into the center of her being. She'd wake up, her pulse thrumming with the divine fire of fusion, and it felt like she'd explode if she tried to restrain herself for another second.

Tonight was one of those nights. She'd woken up, too hot to sleep, and stumbled her way out of the palace as quietly as she could. Each breath was heavy and felt achingly cold, until she realized: When she breathed out, she could see the world quivering in front of her. The heat of her breath was enough to leave the air shimmering.

By the time she made her way into the Hell of Blazing Fires, her footsteps were sizzling on the uneven stone floor. Blackened footprints stretched behind her. Before she reached her destination, she could feel the putty-like goo of molten rock clinging to her feet like mud. Soon, even that burnt to ash.

Her destination was a smaller cavern, out of the way and ignored. There was no reason for anybody to come here, nothing interesting apart from the scorched trail of footprints that recorded a dozen other visits like this. Even by the standards of the mostly-empty abandoned hell, it was unimportant and uninhabited.

It was perfect.

There was no time now. She felt like she was going to burst. The air ripped itself apart where it touched her skin, forming a blue-white film of plasma that licked at the floor in crackling prominences. She raised one trembling arm, and her cape, leg of fission, leg of fusion, and control rod appeared on her body in a flash of light. Power rushed out, making the cape billow behind her until she gritted her teeth and reined it in. A nuclear furnace burned in her heart, but she contained it, swallowed it, made it a part of herself.

"Hrrrrrrrgh..." Utsuho growled low, channeling the energy into a single point. Thermonuclear fire flared out inside her clenched fist and gushed between her fingers like water. When the flow of power was so strong that it felt like it might crush her, she lashed her hand forward, blasting out a jet of plasma. It washed across the rocks, leaving a sizzling, red-hot arc on the floor. "Rrr!" The flame flowed out to envelope her fist, and she smashed a boulder into molten rock with an overhanded blow. "Rrah!"

She carried the momentum from her punch forward, forming a ball of plasma into her palm before blasting it across the cavern. The darkness was briefly illuminated by a streak of light, punctuated by an eruption of flame at the other end. It wasn't enough. It was never enough. The power clawed at her insides, demanding more, always more. With a _whump_ of displaced air, Utsuho spread her wings. A single forceful flap sent a gust of superheated wind across the floor and propelled her a few meters into the air. With her hands above her head, she summoned an even larger star, then slammed it to the floor of the cavern. Stone melted and vaporized where it impacted. A sloshing crater of molten rock formed beneath her.

On nights like these, she barely felt like a person. She was a _force_, a cosmic energy that was lashed to the tiny frame of this bird-body. Her memories of home were dim, a footnote to this new being of fury and power. White-hot lines of energy gleamed beneath her skin, tracing out veins and arteries that now carried something that was no longer quite blood.

With another thundering flap of her wings, Utsuho unthinkingly launched herself higher. She wanted only to burn now, to burn and rage until only ashes and iron were left. Another incoherent scream ripped itself from her throat, and a shockwave blasted out in every direction. The entire cavern sizzled and quaked, and the last few tenacious stalactites crashed to the half-molten floor. Dust and steam circled her in wispy bands now, caught in the magnetic field that was radiating from the nuclear furnace of her heart.

"Okuu!"

Utsuho whirled toward the sound, with plasma streaming from her eyes. There was an animal below. A girl. She waved her arms, and the sight only enraged Utsuho further. With another snarl, she gestured grandly, and the pulsing heart of a star grew in the air above her head. A wind rose in the chamber as air streamed in toward it, providing more and more fuel.

"H-hey! Okuu!" The girl started dashing across the cavern. She was in too much of a rush to stay upright, and dropped to all fours, bounding along the ground in desperate leaps over the molten patches. Utsuho hurled the half-formed star. It shed parts of itself as it flew, the impossible pressure within boiling off its photosphere, but there was still enough to smash a new crater into the ground. The girl scrambled to the side, barely dodging the impact.

"Okuu! Stop!" The girl leapt into the air. Utsuho summoned a jet of nuclear flame into her hand, ready for a second blow... and then caught a glimpse of the girl's face.

_Rin._

The sight brought her consciousness back to the surface, and in an instant, the rage was gone. The rest happened in a flash. In one gust of roiling hot air, Utsuho dissipated the energy she'd summoned. Rin tackled her around the waist, and the air filled with the sickening smell of sizzling flesh. The two started plummeting toward the still half-molten floor.

Utsuho tugged Rin against herself, then lashed her wings forward to shield the kasha as well as she could. Her back slammed into the rocky ground, knocking the wind out of her with a grunt, and the pair went rolling. Utsuho held Rin tightly while the world spun around them, and her own back and wings absorbed the brunt of the impacts.

After tumbling for several meters, the two finally came to a rest, with Utsuho laying on her back in a puddle of cooling magma. It was still almost hot enough to melt iron, but for a hellraven, that was nothing, even without her fusion powers. Even for Rin it wouldn't be terribly dangerous by itself... but the heat of fusion was a different matter.

Atop her, Rin gave a weak cough, and Utsuho carefully sat up and moved the pair to the edge of the crater. With her teeth gritted, she pulled back to give Rin a little more space. "What the hell do you think you were doing?! That could've killed you!"

For a moment, it didn't seem like Rin was going to respond. Then, still coughing, she relaxed her death grip around Utsuho's waist and leaned back. "Y-yeah. Pretty dumb of me, huh?" She looked down at herself, surveying the damage, and mumbled, "I just don't like seeing ya like that, you know?"

"Idiot. Fucking idiot." Distractedly, Utsuho banished the control rod, giving her the use of both hands again, and she pulled a hole in Rin's dress wider so she could inspect the damage. Her clothes were a charred mess, but though the flesh below was a tender red, there didn't seem to be much lasting damage. Utsuho breathed a sigh of relief, but it didn't last long. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah, I think so..." Rin poked at one of the patches of burnt skin, and while it prompted a flinch of pain from her, she seemed satisfied. Smiling weakly, she looked up. "Us kasha are pretty tough! You ought to know that better than anyone."

Utsuho gave an annoyed grunt in response to that glib reply, but couldn't put much force behind it. She was just glad that Rin was okay. Standing up, she easily hefted Rin along with her, then more gently lowered her friend to the floor. "You still shouldn't have done that."

"I guess. It's just, I don't like it when you're like that. You always look like you're just gonna... fly away and leave us or somethin'. Like you were that time with the surfacers." Rin looked down, rubbing idly at one of her burnt areas, while her tails lashed anxiously behind her. "You don't have ta hide it anymore, so come find me next time, okay?"

Utsuho glared at Rin, but she had to admit, she couldn't find a good counterargument. Even so, defeat didn't come easily to her. "Whatever. I'll think about it." She turned away, back toward the path back to the palace, and stretched some of the soreness out of her wings as she considered how to change the subject. "... Lady Satori's gonna kill us. Those were your good clothes."

"Hehe!" Before Utsuho realized what was happening, Rin sprang on her from behind, with her arms looped around her neck. "Yeah, but that's why you need me around! She can't stay mad at me. The second I make my sad kitty face, she's a goner."

"Huh."

"Besides, she can read my brain. Once she sees that it was all 'cuz I was really worried about you, I'm sure she'll forgive me."

"Huuuuuh." Utsuho hadn't thought of that. Rin always had been the idea girl of the pair. "Do you really think so?"

"She's been worried about ya too. We all are. That's why you shouldn't go runnin' off alone, birdbrain." Rin pushed off the ground, and quite nimbly wrapped her legs around Utsuho's waist, leaving the hellraven fully supporting her weight.

"Nnh. What the hell are you doing?"

"You've gotta carry me back to the palace. Punishment for making me follow ya all the way out here in the middle of the night or something."

Utsuho reflexively opened her mouth to argue, but couldn't find the will. For the first time tonight, she was calm and content. No sense ruining it. Moving her hands down, she slid them under Rin's knees for support, then hefted the kasha into a more stable position. She couldn't have handled the weight before, but ever since swallowing Yatagarasu, she'd found things like this pretty easy. "Well, whatever. Are you ready?"

"Mmhm!"

After shifting her wings one last time to get comfortable with the kasha nestled between them, Okuu took off sprinting toward the Palace of Earth Spirits. Rin gave a delighted cackle at the speed, and the cavern was soon filled with the echoing sounds of her laughter and the tap of Okuu's shoes on the stone.


End file.
